I took a break from my thesis proposal drafting today to go and see Spider-Man 3. The last two Spidey films came out while I was in the middle of assignment work or exam block, and they've always helped alleviate my stress a little.

I....I don't know. I liked a lot of the little things about the film, but as a whole? I didn't like it as much as the first two films. It was kind of long, and there was too much going on. They should've kept it to one villain (as good as Haden Church was, I think he was underused) and lost the subplot with Gwen Stacy completely.

Some of the symbiote plot was unintentionally funny. That it turned Peter into this weird hardcore emo version of Tony Manero was hilarious, but not in a good way. More in a 'this is a car crash but I can't look away' kind of way. Especially the bad flirting.

Mostly, I hung out for the two minutes that Willem Dafoe was onscreen. I like that Norman Osborn's presence has been maintained through the trilogy. That painting in Harry's study was gorgeous too. So much love for teh Dafoe.

If they do a fourth film (and they've left it open for that), I want to see Curt Connors/the Lizard as the villain. They've had Connors hanging about in the background in this film and the last one establishing a teacher/student relationship with Peter. I want to see more of that. And seeing as they've followed comic canon and portrayed him with his right arm missing, there's no better excuse. Plus, Dylan Baker is great in the role. Let's see more of him.

And now, back to it. I'm about halfway through now, so I think I could plausibly get to 3000 words by the end of the long weekend.

I still haven't been able to see the film yet, though I did read your comments anyway and found them to be rather interesting -- it does seem like most people's opinion is that it had too much going on and that while there were some good parts here and there, there were also a lot of bad moments and it's not as good as the first two overall. What did you think of the Venom subplot? It has kind of a fanservice feel to it, I think, but then again, I haven't watched it yet.

In terms of a fourth film, it's apparently confirmed that there will be one, though they're not even sure if Raimi and co. will be back yet.

I thought Topher Grace made a reasonable job of Eddie Brock. He had good chemistry with Tobey Maguire, so you can believe the rivalry between Peter and Eddie.

As for Venom, the CGI was pretty damn good and faithful to the comics. That part of the symbiote plot worked. What didn't work well was Peter's behaviour under the symbiote's influence. I can understand that he might act much more brutally. But then there's this entire disco sequence (complete with disco reworking of the Spider-Man theme) of Peter spinning, hip thrusting and pointing at girls in the street, followed by this massive show off display in a jazz club (without giving too much away, it's the bit in the trailer where he's dancing with Gwen). That's what ruins it, because it's getting just a little too silly. I have a feeling there'll be some wank on that on the SSH! boards, though I'm steering clear of the crazy there.

At the risk of spoiling you, they do leave a small opening for the symbiote to make a future appearance. I'm putting bets on Carnage (another fan favourite) if they do.

I'm still not entirely sure why the writers/Sam Raimi chose to have three villains rather than just one or two. It doesn't allow for much character development for either Brock or Sandman (Harry has the advantage in being developed over the two previous films). I caught some of Spidey 2 on tv earlier and was struck by just how well-developed Doc Ock was in the film. And these two just weren't as much.

I have to add that it was a fairly long film too, so perhaps there are scenes that ended up on the cutting room floor that might improve the film somewhat.

Even if this one wasn't as good, I'd still see a fourth one. Dylan Baker (the actor who played Connors) said he was open to playing the Lizard in a future film. And I hope they make good on that, because I like Connors and I like Baker in the role.